T-Mobile, the UN-carrier that's fed up with the wireless biz's B.S., may have just sparked a revolution.
The carrier is making waves with its new Jump program, and soon after last week's announcement that customers could upgrade their devices up to two times a year, Sprint unveiled a pair of revised Unlimited talk, text and data plans.
AT&T is due to give some sort of announcement tomorrow, and today we have signs that Verizon is feeling the pressure to rethink how it does upgrades.
A training slide sent Droid-Life's way suggests Big Red is about to reveal "VZ Edge," an upgrade program that lets certain customers switch out their phones once they've paid off half of their old handset.
Breaking down upgrades
Verizon implemented a 24-month upgrade wait time earlier this year, however it also devised a device payment plan that allows customers to purchase a phone or tablet at full price (above $349.99) and pay the device off in 12 payments, with a $2 fee tacked onto each installment.
The idea with the payment plan was to be able to upgrade more frequently, but now it looks like Verizon is gearing up to add a little nuance to the system, changes that will help customers "stay on the leading edge of technology."
Today's tipped slide states that users can upgrade at anytime after they've paid off 50 percent of the phone they currently own. Not all details are here obviously, but there's no mention of limits on how many times a customer can upgrade.
VZ Edge is apparently sans upgrade fees and requires no service contract. There's no info on unlimited data, but as Droid-Life pointed out the current device payment plan lets users keep their unlimited data plan rolling.
All in all, it's not a bad sounding deal so far, though how many customers will be able to use it (and how advantageous it really is for them) remains to be seen. Unfortunately, we have until Aug. 25 to wait, as that's the day Edge is supposed to officially start slicing.
- T-Mobile is adding a due of mobile devices to its line up this week. Why don't you check them out?
